This is an
edited transcript of an interview with Richard Feynman. He talks
openly about how he and his fellow atomic scientists of the Manhattan
Project could drink and revel in the success of the terrible weapon
they had created while on the other side of the world in Hiroshima
thousands of their fellow human beings were dead or dying from it;
and why Feynman could just as well have gotten along without a Nobel
Prize.

Invitation
to the Bomb

While working
on his PhD thesis, Feynman was asked to join the project to develop
the atomic bomb.

It was a completely
different kind of thing. It would mean that I would have to stop
the research in what I was doing, which is my lifes desire,
to take time off to do this, which I felt I should do in order to
protect civilization. Okay? So that was what I had to debate with
myself. My first reaction was, well, I didnt want to get interrupted
in my normal work to do this odd job. There was also the problem,
of course, of any moral thing involving war. I wouldnt have
much to do with that, but it kinda scared me when I realized what
the weapon would be, and that since it might be possible, it must
be possible. There was nothing that I knew that indicated that if
we could do it they couldnt do it, and therefore it was very
important to try to cooperate.

(In early 1943
Feynman joined Oppenheimers team at Los Alamos).

US Army

An
image that changed the world - the Mushroom Cloud over Hiroshima

With regard
to moral questions, I do have something I would like to say about
it. The original reason to start the project, which was that the
Germans were a danger, started me off on a process of action which
was to try to develop this first system at Princeton and then at
Los Alamos, to try to make the bomb work. All kinds of attempts
were made to redesign it to make it a worse bomb and so on. But
what I did, - immorally I would say  was to not remember the
reason that I said I was doing it, so that when the reason changed,
because Germany was defeated, not the singlest thought came to my
mind at all about that, that that, meant now I would have to reconsider
why I am continuing to do this. I simply didnt think, okay?

Success and
Suffering

On 6 August
1945 the atomic bomb was exploded over Hiroshima.

US
Airforce

The
City of Hiroshima before and after the bomb - the rings are
at 1000ft intervals from the hypocenter

The only reaction
that I remember  perhaps I was blinded by my own reaction
 was a very considerable elation and excitement, and there
were parties and people got drunk and it would make a tremendously
interesting contrast, what was going on in Los Alamos at the same
time as what was going on in Hiroshima. I was involved with this
happy thing and also drinking and drunk and playing drums sitting
on the hood of the bonnet of-a Jeep and playing drums with
excitement running all over Los Alamos at the same time as people
were dying and struggling in Hiroshima.

I had a very
strong reaction after the war of a peculiar nature-it may be just
from the bomb itself and it may be for other psychological reasons,
Id just lost my wife or something, but I remember being in
New York with my mother in a restaurant, immediately after Hiroshima
and thinking about New York, and I knew how big the bomb in Hiroshima
was, how big an area it covered and so on, and I realized from where
we were-I dont know, 59th Street-that to drop one
on 34th Street, it would spread all the way out here
and all these people would be killed and all the things would be
killed and there wasnt only one bomb available, but it was
easy to continue to make them, and therefore that things were sort
of doomed because already it happened to me-very early, earlier
than to others who were more optimistic-that international relations
and the way people were behaving were no different than they had
ever been before and that it was just going to go the same way as
any other thing and I was sure that it was going, therefore, to
be used very soon. So I felt very uncomfortable and thought, really
believed , that it was silly: I would see people building a bridge
and I would say they dont understand. I really
believed that it was senseless to make anything because it would
be destroyed very soon anyway, but they didnt understand that
and I had this very strange view of any construction that I would
see, I would always think how foolish they are trying to make something.
So I was really in a kind of depressive condition.

Nobel Foundation

Richard
Feynman

I Dont
Have To Be Good Because They Think Im Going to Be Good

After the
war Feynman joined Hans Bethe, winner of the 1967 Nobel Prize in
Physics at Cornell University. He turned down the offer of a job
at Princetons Institute for Advanced Study.

They must have
expected me to be wonderful to offer me a job like this and I wasnt
wonderful, and therefore realized a new principle, which was not
that Im not responsible for what other people think I am able
to do; I dont have to be good because they think Im
going to be good. And somehow or other I could relax about this,
and I thought to myself, I havent done anything important
and Im never going to do anything important. But I used to
enjoy physics and mathematical things and because I used to play
with them it was very short order (that I) worked the things out
for which I later won the Nobel Prize.

The Nobel
Prize  Was It Worth It?

Feynman was
awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics.

What I essentially
did  and also it was done independently by two other people,
(Sinitiro) Tomanaga in Japan and (Julian) Schwinger  was to
figure out how to control, how to analyze and discuss the original
quantum theory of electricity and magnetism that had been written
in 1928; how to interpret it so as to avoid the infinities, to make
calculations for which has been done so far, so that quantum electrodynamics
fits experiment in every detail where its applicable- not involving
the nuclear forces, for instance-and it was the work that I did
in 1947 to figure out how to do that, for which I won the Nobel
Prize.

Nobel
Foundation

The
Pomp and Circumstance of a Nobel Prize Ceremony

I dont
know anything about the Nobel Prize, I dont understand what
its all about or whats worth what, but if the people
in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y, or z wins the Nobel Prize
then so be it. I wont have anything to do with the Nobel Prize its
a pain in the .I dont like honors. I appreciate it, and
I know theres a lot of physicists who use my work, I dont
need anything else, I dont think theres any sense to
anything else. I dont think that it makes any point that someone
in the Swedish Academy decides that this work is noble enough to
receive a prize  Ive already got the prize. The prize
is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery,
the observation that other people use it (my work) - those are the
real things, the honors are unreal to me. I dont believe in
honors, it bothers me, honors bother, honors is epaulettes, honors
is uniforms. My papa bought me up this way. I cant stand it,
it hurts me.

Richard
Feynman was one of the centurys most brilliant theoretical and
original thinkers. Born in 1918 in Brooklyn, he received his PhD from
Princeton in 1942. He taught at Cornell and the California Institute
of Technology. In 1965 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for
his work in quantum electrodynamics. Thank's to BBC TV Horizon: The
Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1981) produced by Christopher Sykes.